


We'll Forget the Sun in His Jealous Sky

by nyxocity



Series: Jealous Sky Verse [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Established Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester, Jess finds out the truth, Love, Multi, Sibling Incest, Stanford Era (Supernatural), Stanford Student Sam Winchester, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-02
Updated: 2008-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 17:28:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29014335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nyxocity/pseuds/nyxocity
Summary: Dean goes to Stanford to check in on Sam from afar and ends up meeting Jess. They fall for each other, but hunts keep Dean away a long time and when he returns after a six month span, he finds her with Sam. Old hurts break loose between Sam and Dean, Jess finds out the truth, and discovers she's just as much in love with both of them as they are with each other.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester, Jessica Moore/Dean Winchester, Jessica Moore/Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester, Jessica Moore/Sam Winchester
Series: Jealous Sky Verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2128539
Comments: 5
Kudos: 28





	1. Chapter 1

2004

Stanford is the slow sprawl of adobe colored rooftops and palm trees, graceful archways with shadowed doorways beyond, knowledge locked behind.  
  
Boys and girls stream from open doors, gather in clustering orbits that disappear between buildings, and Dean watches the ebb and flow. There. Tall, slanted, scrunched shoulders and he’d know that gait anywhere.  
  
Sam’s been blowing hair out of his face since he was old enough to grow it into bangs, and Dean guesses he didn’t really expect that to change. It’s just that... nothing else has, either. It’s _Sam_ , crossing the lawn swinging his same long, goofy limbs inside his same baggy jeans and layered t-shirts, same secretive, half-forgotten smile twisting his mouth that Dean remembers (too seldom) from Sam’s teenage years. Even the huge, misshapen backpack slung across his shoulders is familiar.  
  
It’s _Sam_ , and he doesn’t know why he didn’t expect it to be like this—just like it’s always been—he just didn’t, and for a second he feels like his heart got smacked right through his throat and out the back of his brain.  
  
One year and ten months melt away like ice cream in the shimmer of the springtime heat.  
  
There’s a girl walking up to his car—one of the hottest blondes he thinks he’s ever seen.  
  
“You looking for someone?” she asks, light frown marring the smooth, sun-kissed lines of her face.  
  
“Not anymore,” he answers, grinning as he eyes her up and down.  
  
*  
  
She takes him to bookstores and coffee shops, light breeze of girl who introduces him to people with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes and warmth in her heart. It has its appeal, he thinks, as he follows her through the rest of her day. People who think, but don’t expect too much, and she names them one and all, her arms around their necks in hello hugs or goodbye kisses on the cheek, and for a moment, he wonders how it is to _be_ like this.  
  
If this is what _Sam_ feels. If this is what _he_ always wanted.  
  
A whirlwind of names and faces and places, and finally, they’re alone in his car, his eyes torn between the expanse of her thigh and the road ahead, and she’s smiling at him like she wants him to choose.  
  
*  
  
The moon comes to call on a lover’s hilltop rise; a ghostly white, flat coin hung in the California sky. It leeches the color from the houses and hills, paints them in shades of black and gray like mystery. Jess perches on the hood of the car, her face and neck a slice of white marble, feet together on the bumper. She smells like bubble gum and daffodils, childhood afternoons drenched in summer sun, and when she speaks, he can smell sweet, crushed grapes in her breath.  
  
“I think I had too much wine,” she says and giggles.  
  
He steps up to the car, fits his palms against the curve of her knees, skin to skin. She squints at him, scrunch of freckled nose and flash of white teeth behind the velvet of her full, pink mouth.  
  
She grabs his hand, slides it down her thigh to rest against the crotch of her jean shorts. Spreads her knees and grinds up against his fingers, whole body rising as her mouth meets his, melting hot and opening slow. He wraps his other arm around her waist and pulls her in, hand sliding up to brush the taut skin of her belly and she whimpers—more for the lack of his hand between her legs than for the touch of bare skin—and he slides his hand inside her pants, a tiny sound escaping both of them as his fingers find the cleft of her, slick and soaking wet.  
  
“So wet,” he murmurs, catching her tongue with his, chasing it down into her mouth. She bucks her hips once, grinds against him, moaning into his throat, and _Jesus fucking Christ_ , she comes right there, clenching around his fingers, her arms twitching around his neck.  
  
“Want you inside me,” she whispers, still quaking with little aftershocks. “Want you to fuck me,” she says, as if he hasn’t been rock hard for the last five minutes, wanting exactly that.  
  
More impatient than him (and he didn’t think that was possible), she shucks from her clothes and stretches out on the hood of the car. She strikes a pose, lying naked on her side, legs spread open towards him, and he isn’t sure he’s ever seen anything quite like her—isn’t sure if he’s ever _known_ anyone like her. She toes at his cheek, nearly catches his open mouth with her foot. She laughs at his expression, hides her mouth behind the heel of her hand, and he growls, wraps his fingers around the width of her ankles and drags her body down to him.  
  
Her mouth is open with anything _but_ laughter when he slides inside her, one quick thrust all the way to the top, circle of his arms like a band of iron, holding her in place. He stares down into her eyes as he moves, rocking in and out of her like waves at high tide, and she stares right back, matches the smoldering heat in his gaze, pupils blown wide, takes it all and doesn’t blink, doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t even look away when she comes again, thin blue irises of her eyes nearly disappearing, consumed by the pupils, long lashes fluttering over them like bird’s wings.  
  
When she’s done, she pulls from his arms. Slides to the ground and walks around to the driver’s side. Plants her feet wide apart in the grass and bends across the hood with a sweep of her golden blond hair, eyes flashing wicked in the moonlight.  
  
“Like this,” she whispers, flattening her breasts and belly against the gleaming metal.  
  
He doesn’t need to be told twice.  
  
*  
  
After, they head back to her place. Her roommate’s got a boyfriend, stays over at his place most of the time, and Dean thinks that’s some of the best news he’s heard since she bent over the car earlier.  
  
She washes her skin with liquid soap in a rainbow of hues and an assortment of fancy names; an armada of them lined up on the ceramic bar that runs across the back wall of the tub. Plastic soldiers with vivid colors poured inside them like souls and the taste of them gets in his way, makes him have to lick harder, deeper to get to the taste of her underneath.  
  
In her room there are shelves, stuffed animals and childhood memoirs, trophies and glittering trinkets, pieces of a lifetime. Her vanity is covered with jars of perfume and lotion, entire fleets, spangled jewelry scattered in between. Painstaking precision as she applies emerald shades to her eyes, baby pink lipstick to her mouth. Swats at him when he tries to steal the tube from her hand, wants to kiss away the color, see her lips reddened by nothing but his own.  
  
He’ll never understand chicks. Make-up, hairspray, fancy soap and perfume and enough clothes to outfit a third world country, like they have to dress it up or he wouldn’t come looking. She’s sexier here, with a thigh wrapped around either side of his head, base of her spine digging against the edge of the kitchen table, low whine caught deep in her throat. Her hair falls in loose knots, lipstick rubbed away, mouth and cheeks pink with nothing but blood as he licks between her thighs. Nothing flowery about the taste of her here; pure girl, musk and truth.  
  
*  
  
“You want cookies?” she asks, bouncing up off the table when she’s done, sticky between her thighs, cheeks flushed.  
  
She moves to the cabinets and starts unloading flour and sugar, measuring cups and spoons.  
  
He rises from his knees, wipes at his chin and laughs. “You’re gonna make cookies? Now?”  
  
“Yeah. You like chocolate chips?” she asks, grinning.  
  
She makes him wash up in the kitchen sink like a kid before she’ll let him help. He hands her the ingredients and she measures, dumps them in and stirs the bowl, and when it’s all said and done, they’re wearing more flour than they’ve actually used, sticky drips of batter licked from bare skin, and there are golden brown cookies, heavy scent of chocolate in the air.  
  
She carries the plate to the living room, settles on the couch and turns on the tv with a flick of the remote. She zooms through channels on the cable box, finger finally hovering over a movie he recognizes immediately.  
  
“The Howling three?” he asks, astonished.  
  
“You recognized the movie in thirty seconds and you’re making fun of _me_?”  
  
“No,” he says, slow grin as he settles back into the couch. “It’s great. The part where the werewolf nuns show up, and then—“  
  
“The ballerina werewolf!” She laughs, nodding.  
  
“Best part.” He nods, leans and plucks a cookie from the plate. It’s warm and gooey, perfect and sugary, and she hands him the glass of milk she’d poured without a word.  
  
They sit, thigh to thigh, shoulder to shoulder, barely touching as the people on the screen go through motions that try to pass for plot. By the time the credits roll, her head is on his shoulder, sliding slowly down his chest. Her eyes are closed and there’s a tiny smile curving her lips, cookie crumbs scattered at the edges of it.  
  
\------  
  
It’s more than a month before he comes to visit again, ghost of Sam tugging at him. He takes a quick glance, takes all he can stand of his brother talking, laughing, that shy, open-mouthed, innocent, sweet laugh like he’d never salted and burned a tiny set of bones. Like he’d never stared in a rear view mirror at the town falling away behind them in dust, eyes full of longing.  
  
When he shows up at her apartment he’s got a six pack of beer dangling from his third and fourth fingers, lazy slant of cardboard half-resting against the door. The other three fingers are wrapped around the neck of a wine bottle—red, like he remembers she loved. She opens the door dressed in blue silk pajama pants patterned with pale-blue embroidered dragons, and an even paler tank top. There’s a dusting of some kind of white powder across one cheek, and her eyes are bright, smile warm as she bounds through the doorway and hugs him.  
  
Inside, she’s cooking for them, lemon wedges and flour scattered across the counter, recipes in curving script on ivory colored scraps of paper. She giggles and tucks one card into her bra when he tries to peek at it, and he takes that an invitation rather than a deterrent.  
  
Three minutes later, she’s on the floor underneath him, dragons rucked down around her hips, hair spread out in a golden pool across the creamy kitchen tile, head tilted back and mouth wide open. She bucks hard against his chin, fingers digging deep into the short spikes of his hair, and he rewards her wriggling by sucking her clit into his mouth with a wet, hungry sound.  
  
It’s the best appetizer he can think of, and when he thrusts two fingers inside her, hooks the tips and pushes against that spot no woman can reach by herself, her breathing ramps up, hips rising off the floor. He lifts his face and watches her expression change, feels the silken muscles inside her flutter and tense in anticipation.  
  
“Yeah, Jess. Come on, do it.” He lowers his head, seals his mouth over her clit and tongues under the hood with quick, deft strokes. One, two, three, and then she’s twisting, shuddering and pumping against him, fingers threaded through his hair and pulling tight, fountain gushing against his chin. He takes his time, licks up every drop nice and slow, tracing the lines and round shape of her pussy until she’s mewling, trying to drag his head away from her body.  
  
She shoves them both into the bathroom while dinner cooks, air fragrant with lemon and breaded meat. Tickles him when he protests and chases him into the tub.  
  
“Have to be clean before we eat,” she says, soaping up a girly loofah and slapping it against his shoulder. Spray of water and soap, mild stinging in his eyes and he laughs, reaches for her, catches her up in his arms. He steals the loofah and washes her with thorough slowness, teasing. Bubbles float over her breasts, breathy moans leaving her as her nipples harden to peaks. Slip and slide, easy down the flat plane of her belly to the trimmed hair between her legs, honey-colored with pink between. His hand slips between her thighs like the fat beads of water, rough edge of the loofah teasing, brush of his fingertips beneath.  
  
“Dean,” she moans, arching into his touch. “We have to eat.”  
  
He just grins and falls to his knees.  
  
*  
  
They’re sitting on the couch, eating lemon chicken and watching some old black and white movie when she says, “You’re not my usual type of guy.”  
  
He tilts his head to look at her, considers this. Wonders if it’s some kind of girl version of a compliment or the gateway to a really terrifying “talk”.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
She turns her eyes back to her plate, little smile creeping over her mouth as she nods. “Yeah.”  
  
“I get that a lot.” Words are like a fountain with him, his tongue always a mile ahead of him, stuff spilling out that he can’t even believe after it’s said. And he’s not too dumb to know that it usually works in his favor. It’s part of his charm.  
  
She turns that grin on him, and the next thing he knows, she’s on top of him, lemon chicken sliding to the floor in a trail of grease, bodies following after.  
  
*  
  
In the morning, he wakes in the tangle of sheets alone, pulls from the bed with sleep filled eyes.  
  
She’s in the bathroom, wrapped in a silk robe with the electric clippers in her hand, looking startled to see him stagger through the doorway.  
  
“I need to shave.”  
  
He’s knows she doesn’t mean her legs or her underarms, because she shaved those in the shower last night.  
  
“Gimme those,” he says. Grabs the clippers from her hand and sets them on the counter, grabs her slim wrist in the other and spins her around so his back’s against the sink and she’s in his arms.  
  
“Leave it,” he says, smiling, half-lidded and lazy. “I like it.”  
  
*  
  
The sun is bright as they stroll through the streets, threading their way through other students where the buildings thicken and grow closer together.  
  
“ _Ramble On_ ,” he’s saying. “That’s the song I want them to play at my funeral. It fits.”  
  
“You think it’s their best song?”  
  
“No, that’d be _Achilles Last Stand_.”  
  
“Typical.”  
  
“Can’t argue with Plant,” he shrugs. “So. Your favorite song?”  
  
“Black Dog.”  
  
“Good choice.”  
  
“So how long are you in town for this time?” she asks, glancing up at him through sunlight.  
  
He opens the door to the music shop, holds it for her. “The weekend.” He shrugs.  
  
“Really?” her face lights up and she slips her hand into his, tugs him down the aisle past the surly looking boy in a red cap, headphones covering his ears. It happens so fast he doesn’t have time to protest—not that she could hear him over the obnoxious indie-rock blaring over the speakers, anyway. By the time she slows, drawing to a halt in front of the _P_ tab, she’s already let go again.  
  
“Do you even own anything recorded after 1995?” she asks, thumbing through the CDs.  
  
“They made music after 1995?” he deadpans, and she laughs, corners of her eyes crinkling.  
  
“I wonder if they have this on tape,” she murmurs, eyes already scanning across the store.  
  
“What is it?” he asks, leaning over to see.  
  
“Angry chick rock,” she says with a wink. “You’ll love it.”  
  
_Liz Phair: Extraordinary_. Whatever, he thinks, shrugging. The chick on the cover is hot.  
  
“Come on,” she urges. She smiles, energy infectious, and he follows her lead as she moves down the aisle. She doesn’t take his hand this time.  
  
They find the album on tape, and on the way to the checkout, she grabs a bag of blank cassette tapes almost buried behind the Top 20 CD display.  
  
*  
  
She torments him for a while after they get back to her place, jamming the tape into an old fashioned double tape deck boom box. Loud guitar and throaty, angry chick voice fill the apartment as she bounces through the house to it, twirling the vacuum and rubbing dust rags in time with the tunes.  
  
_”I am extraordinary  
If you'd ever get to know me…_  
  
On the third time around, he has to admit, it _could_ be a lot worse. Singer chick’s a little sick, but he likes ‘em a little sick, and she can play a guitar.  
  
_”I am extraordinary…”_  
  
Jess is bent, wiping down the entertainment center, edge of her panties peeking out from under her robe, and he moves up behind her, slides his hand up under, palm fitting right to the curve like a glove.  
  
She doesn’t jump, or pull away. She just wriggles and turns her face around to grin at him.  
  
After the fourth time they listen to the whole album, sticky and sated and content on the carpet, she finally sits up, thumps him on the chest and hits “Stop” on the boom box.  
  
“Go get your tapes from the car.”  
  
They spend the next three hours talking about Led Zeppelin. Jess uses the double cassette tape deck to make him one of the sweetest Zeppelin mix tapes ever known to man. She tells him her theory of music and psychology, and how John Bonham wasn’t human while she does it. Picks each track with care and explains why, how the songs are like a really good dessert, one song like a flavor leading, making the way for the subtle flavors afterward, each one building on the last one and enriching it, bringing it to its full potential.  
  
They argue the merits of Neil Peart vs. John Bonham, critique the mistake that was _Coda_ \--the one album she doesn’t choose any songs from—and by the time the tape is winding down, so is the sun, darkness creeping into the room.  
  
She pulls the tape from the deck, smiling to herself as she writes something carefully on the label, craning her head and shoulder to block his view when he tries to look. When she’s done, she tucks it away.  
  
“Hey,” she says, bright-eyed and breathless. “You like to shoot pool?”  
  
*  
  
Four days before he leaves, two more than he’d meant to stay, and only leaves then because his Dad calls, asking for help.  
  
She says goodbye to him at the car. Kisses him slow and sweet in a way that makes the bottom drop out of his stomach. She presses the mix tape into his hand, gives him a quick, tremble of a smile, and then she’s gone, flowery scent of her perfume still lingering in his clothes.  
  
He sits in the car for a long moment, cassette case in his hand, its weight rolled against his palm. Slow sigh and he opens the case, stops when he feels the bite of something cold and sharp.  
  
A key.  
  
He stares at it, dumbfounded. There’s a note scrawled on the inside of the case. _In case you ramble on back this way_. Numb, he slips the key into his pocket, feeds the tape into the deck.  
  
_"Babe, baby, baby, I’m gonna leave you."_  
  
A bitter smirk tugs his mouth and he puts his foot on the brake, shifts the Impala into drive.  
  
\-----  
  
The road stretches out forever, white lines painted with nothing but time for memories.  
  
He hates that, these empty nights, the Impala good for nothing but song lyrics that cut at him, her metallic body eating lines in the road.  
  
It’s times like these that he thinks of Cassie. Remembers what it was like to share a bed with someone for more than a night. To lay with them, hold someone and know the peace of comfort. The sound of even breathing, untroubled by bad dreams, a room filled with white froth and gauzy curtains, not a trace of salt on the air. Sometimes, he thinks he’s done, over her, and then a song will catch him, or the scent of jasmine on a passing woman calls him back, and it’s like it was yesterday; pain like fresh tilled earth in his heart.  
  
More than the musky taste of sweetness on his tongue, more than silken heat holding him, taking him deep, more than a circle of arms around his shoulders. He doesn’t like to think about what she taught him. About comforts he never wanted to learn, concepts he’d never considered.  
  
It was after her he’d started noticing the curve of a girl’s throat, the shape of her lips, and the sound of her voice.  
  
Somehow, he doesn’t think she’d appreciate it if he thanked her for helping him notice these things. He isn’t sure he appreciates her for making him see them.  
  
Her caramel skin runs pale, pomegranate to peach, red-brown curls straightening to honey blond.  
  
He thinks of Jess, perfect pink toenails, same exact shade as her cunt. The way they curled when she came, the tiny moans she made into the pillow, the carpet, the kitchen tile.  
  
There's a little dip of a scar on her belly that he likes to run his tongue along, white pucker that tastes just like the rest of her, only thinner, closer to the blood that rushes beneath her skin.  
  
\-----  
  
Six months before the shape of her apartment key cuts into his hand. Six months, not a word, not a sound. He isn’t sure why he’s here, hasn’t thought about it too much, truth be told. He’s a creature of instinct, goes where his gut guides him.  
  
And yet… he stops here, uncertain for a moment, thought intruding into something that should be natural.  
  
Six months. Maybe she met someone else.  
  
And so what? Since when has he cared? Quick awkward moment, make an excuse and wave goodbye. Nothing like a problem.  
  
He slots the key into the lock, turns the knob.  
  
*  
  
She’s stretched out on the couch like he remembers, body tanned and gorgeous, breasts rising high and firm, nipples dark pink and stiff, mouth open and reddened with nothing but kisses, just like before.  
  
Dark head between her thighs, long, lean, angular body, muscles toned and sleek. He almost shuts the door then, almost backs out without a word, something strange rising in the back of his throat.  
  
And then that head lifts, face rising from between her hips, slick with sweat and girl. Wide, pink mouth, bruised with sucking and kissing, deep hazel eyes that he knows almost as well as his own.  
  
“Dean?” Guttural whisper, and he can’t think, can’t move, a boy frozen in a doorway, wanting things he can never have.  
  
“Sam?” Slow, amazed gust of air through his numb lips, and he doesn’t know where the strength came from to even utter that much.  
  
He leaves the key on top of Sam's backpack next to the doorway, then closes the door quietly behind him. Takes a quick breath of air then _moves_ , down the hallway and gone.


	2. Chapter 2

She can feel her cheeks, flushed red with heat as she claws her way up from the couch, sticky heat between her thighs forgotten.  
  
“Shit,” she hisses, fingers scrabbling for dreams against the glass tabletop, closing around the silver body of her phone.  
  
“Wait,” Sam says, sitting up too, hand touching her wrist. “What are you doing?” he asks. There’s a tone in his voice she’s never heard before. Bright surprise edged in dark swirls of fear.  
  
Her finger pauses over the scroll button, names stilling on the screen. She cuts her eyes toward him, flash of anger so bright it cuts her like shards to the bone. “You wanna tell me how you two know each other?”  
  
She watches as his face—that sweet, handsome face, always so open for her—closes down and locks up tight, windows shuttering and doors bolting.  
  
“Fine.” She’ll deal with him later.  
  
 _"Hi, this is Dean and it’s your lucky day—"_  
  
 _Dammit._  
  
She calls back ten times, waiting through all four rings to voicemail before he finally answers, voice like a rusty saw, scratchy and dull.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Dean! Don’t hang up. We need to talk—“  
  
Hollow laugh, brittle and it spins inside her mind, sound caught on the edge of a hurricane. “Nothin’ to talk about, Jess.”  
  
“I can’t let you leave like this,” she answers, voice steady and quiet. “Where are you?”  
  
“Doesn’t matter.”  
  
“Dean, please.”  
  
There’s a long silence on the other end, the sound of wind rushing by outside the car, faint strains of Eric Clapton on the radio. She can picture him there, one hand steady and sure on the steering wheel, trees rushing by, face solid and still as if it were carved from stone. Shooting pain like an arrow through her heart, slow churn of guilt in her stomach, and Sam’s eyes on her, but all she can see is green in her mind, wide with disbelief, stunned with something like grief.  
  
“Dean?”  
  
Heavy sigh from the other end, and then his voice, no softer than his face as he grits out through his teeth, “Yeah. Okay. Sure.”  
  
She tells him where to meet her before he can change his mind.  
  
She’s already in motion, one foot sliding inside the leg of her jeans as she hangs up the phone.  
  
“Jess, hey, slow down.” Sam, gentle, insistent press of fingers into her shoulders, and she shakes him off like water, spins around on him like a top, hair following in arc that catches her across the cheek.  
  
“I owe him this.”  
  
Sam looks away, silence and secrets a moment more, something like sadness flickering in his eyes. “There’s something you should know. He’s…” Sam swallows, a thick, almost audible sound, and he finds the strength to meet her gaze again. “He’s my brother.”  
  
She gives him credit for one thing; his voice wavers, his pupils flicker, but he doesn’t back down, doesn’t look away. Her heart falls like a stone through her stomach all the way to her feet, the clang and clatter of it drowning out every other sound in her mind until she’s empty, numb. She thinks maybe she breathes, her lungs drawing unconscious air, and her heartbeat is a suspended sound, quiet river rage of blood coursing through her.  
  
“Goddamn it, Sam.”  
  
“Jess…” He reaches for her, his entire face crumpling in apology, and her hand flashes out, closes the space between them. She can feel the twist of her mouth, the set of her jaw, knows her eyes are like flecks of ice as she looks him up and down. Words rise, coil like a cobra on the tip of her tongue, poised on the verge of striking, venom and bile. She swallows back their taste, takes back the silent wish in her heart, and chokes on the confusion.  
  
“I should have told you.” Laid bare, like skin all stripped away, and she can’t look, doesn’t want to see the weight like gravity in his eyes.  
  
“Yeah. You should’ve,” is all she says.  
  
“I should be the one going to talk to him,” Sam says, and she can almost see the guilt settle across his shoulders.  
  
“Yeah. You should.”  
  
She turns away, grabs the door knob and turns it before the tears catch up, sharp edges of the world blurring with salt and light.  
  
*  
  
The diner is old-fashioned, curved gleaming silver shaping glass around red and blue neon, a shape cut from time and space, glittering page torn from history. Inside the tinted glass doors, the Newbeats blare from the jukebox, singing about running back to someone’s arms, and the twin smells of meatloaf and fresh pie hang thick in the air, compete for attention. She ignores it all, slips through the bustling lunchtime crowd to where he sits, shoulders resting against the red leather seat.  
  
He looks like a man in a dream, like he doesn’t know what he’s doing here. Hands moving through the motions of eating, eyes lost somewhere in the past.  
  
“Hey,” she says, sliding over buttery leather into the seat across from him. The scent of grilled meat topped with mustard and onions is almost overwhelming, but she can still smell him – faint whiff of denim, aftershave and boy – just underneath.  
  
He doesn’t look at her. Curls his fingers around his burger and eyes it carefully in just the same way he _doesn’t_ look at her, and she wants to scream, wants to shout.  
  
“How long?” he asks.  
  
“Almost three months. Dean, I tried to call you. You never answered.”  
  
He chews, methodical grinding of teeth and slow swallow. “I been sitting here the whole time, just thinking, you know, ‘what’re the odds?’.” Painted on smile, forced, too thin.  
  
“I know,” she nods. “It’s crazy, especially since—“  
  
“He never told you about his family.” Dean nods, knowing and bitter, and all she can think is how it’s not a question.  
  
“I didn’t know he was your brother,” she says, and the no matter how soft she makes the words, the sting won’t go from them, leaves her cheeks red and her heart aching.  
  
“Yeah, that’s just insult to injury.” Grim smile as the words leave him, and they color her black and blue, pepper her with bruises.  
  
“It’s been six months, Dean. What did you think would happen?” Guilt chasing shadows of blame through her heart. She doesn’t owe him anything, and yet here she is. Here they both are.  
  
His eyes dance around hers, slide across his plate, dull and windswept green, barren fields where nothing grows. He motions with his hand for the waitress, no flourish in his fingers, no secret smile for her pretty face. He orders more fries as if he had nothing more pressing in the world to do, and when the waitress leaves, Jess tries again.  
  
“If I’d known… I would have—“  
  
“Nah. It’s cool,” he says, and his tone is light and gritty all at once, a jagged stone tossed through the air. Dismissal in a wave of his hand as he reaches for the last fry on his plate, and there’s something brittle in his face, rime of frost freezing his expression, thin veneer held too tight.  
  
“You took off for six months, Dean. What did you think would happen? Where did you go that was so important?”  
  
He stops, so perfectly still that it sends a chill sweeping through her, head to toe. He lifts his face, lips splitting in a grin and there’s something foreign in his eyes, something vicious and nurtured with _years_.  
  
“Hunting monsters.” He says it so smooth, so naturally, wry humor curled around the simplicity of it.  
  
“What?” She blinks, shakes her head, and despite the crystal clarity of his words she _couldn’t_ have understood him right.  
  
“You mean, Sam didn’t tell you?” he asks, and his voice is like a thousand tiny daggers, smile hidden behind them all. “We hunt monsters. Both of us. Spirits, witches, trolls, goblins… Everything you ever thought went bump in the night? It’s all true. ”  
  
She tries for a smile, feels it stumble across her lips and fall. “Y-you’re kidding.”  
  
“Last girl I told didn’t believe me either.” He sighs, bitter rush of air filled with mockery. “Jess. Sam learned how to perform an exorcism in Latin before he learned how to use a phone book.”  
  
“Sam’s the most normal guy I know,” she says, voice sounding distant to her own ears. “He goes to class every day. He’s nice to everyone, he does all his assignments, helps people study. He never complains. He even eats his _vegetables_ \--“  
  
Dean grimaces. “Never could break him of that.”  
  
Jess frowns, narrows her eyes. “He carries my books, holds my hand, kisses me goodnight, puts his arms around me when we sleep together. He doesn’t take off for six months at a time. Doesn’t try to feed me ridiculous stories about hunting monsters. Christ, Dean,” she says, anger finally catching up, bursting like lava through the earth. “What the hell?”  
  
His eyes are cold and furious, flint and steel, sparks flying between. She realizes her mistake then, knows it would have hurt if it was _anyone_ she was talking about, but it’s not just anyone. “God, I’m sor—“  
  
“You think your precious _Sammy_ is so perfect? Better than me? Fuck that,” he roils, low and dangerous. “He’s _just_ like me.”  
  
He stops, tilts his head at her and bares his teeth; a junk yard dog that might still bite. “Well, there might be a few differences. Guess you could draw some… _comparisons_ between us, couldn’t you, Jess?” He curls his tongue against the inside of his cheek, eyes a lewd suggestion.  
  
“That’s it.” She rises from the booth, and his hand grabs her around the wrist. Fingers slot into bone, loop around and hold her there.  
  
“Go talk to Sam,” he says conversationally, smile like a weapon, sharp and cold. “Ask him about the salt and the guns and the Latin.” Light squeeze of her wrist, tongue licking at his own wolfish grin. “And when he lies – again -- you’ll know he doesn’t care.”  
  
“Fuck you!” Snap of her tongue and her arm all at once, tugging free of his hold. “You’re _insane_ ,” she accuses, feet carrying her backward across the black and white checkered tile.  
  
He’s not looking at her anymore, but he gives a humorless snort, nods his head like he’s agreeing with the food left on his plate.  
  
His voice drifts after her, hanging on the air above the din.  
  
“Yeah…but I’m not lying.”  
  
*  
  
Crazy motherfucker, she thinks, jamming the car into gear. No wonder Sam doesn’t ever talk about his family. And it’s not like she could have known—  
  
No… _she_ hadn’t known, but _Sam_ had.  
  
-// _”There was this guy I was seeing over the summer. Drove a 60’s Impala—“  
  
“Impala?” Sam asks, sounding odd.  
  
She catches the odd note, turns to look at him. “Yeah, why?”  
  
“Just… an unusual car,” he says, avoids her eyes and shrugs--_//-  
  
And there’d been something careful in his tone, and she’d seen it then but she _understands_ it now.  
  
-// _So this guy you were seeing… what was his name again?”  
  
“Dean,” she answers, and Sam starts choking on his soda so hard she thumps him on the back, gets so scared she forgets what they’d been talking about._//-  
  
He’d never brought it up again. Never said a word.  
  
And well, it makes sense. Sam’s brother is obviously out of his mind.  
  
Except, Dean hadn’t _seemed_ crazy before.  
  
Okay, so maybe he’s the jealous type.  
  
And maybe his little brother’s the type to pick up on his older brother’s leftovers?  
  
She stops at a red light, foot on the brake, toe tapping anxiously inside her sandal.  
  
It doesn’t make any sense, no matter how she comes at it. Sam _should_ have told her, no matter if Dean is crazy or not. Dean might never have come back to see _her_ , but Sam had to have known Dean would be back to see Sam, at least. So why keep it a secret..?  
  
The light turns green and she accelerates, keeps pace with traffic.  
  
-// _“Where’d you learn how to read Latin?” she asks, looking up from her textbook. The library is quiet, and there’s a hush to Sam’s tone as he answers.  
  
“Well, I **am** studying to be a lawyer.”  
  
“So it’s like a hobby?”  
  
“I’m lots of fun at parties,” he says with a grin._//-  
  
Palm trees flash by, gold tinted green cut against the perfect sky, the twinkling of taillights in the California sun.  
  
 _-//“You’re not going to visit your family for Christmas?”  
  
“No.” Face turned away where she can’t see. “We don’t… talk.”//-_  
  
Whatever it was, she figured it’d been bad. Had left it at that.  
  
But there are other things, too, little things.  
  
The way he always knows how to beat the monsters in the horror movies she watches, long before the characters ever figure it out.  
  
The way he always checks to make sure the windows are bolted before he gets in bed, even though she lives on the second floor. Habit, he’d said with a charming smile, and she’d just chalked it up to eccentricity.  
  
The way he always stays at her place, but never leaves a single thing behind, not even so much as a hair in the sink. Exceptionally tidy, she’d thought, but it’s almost spooky, how he leaves no trace in her life, almost like he’s a ghost, himself.  
  
She thinks of voodoo, magic spells based on possessions, hair, blood and bone. Of earth magic, primitive words uttered by firelight. And then she laughs at herself, rolls her eyes up at the clear blue sky outside her car.  
  
The most she’s ever done is play with a Ouija board. She’s got no business contemplating magic.  
  
 _Don’t let him rattle you, Jess._  
  
She’s letting Dean get to her. So stupid.  
  
But there’d been something there, hadn’t there? Under the smart-assed, sarcastic tone meant to defend and cut at her. There’d been a set to his jaw, wisdom in his eyes too old to be earned by someone so young. Buried deep under layers of bravado and anger, there’d been just a thread, the barest thread of hope, something that shimmered with integrity, sincerity. Something like honesty.  
  
His face haunts her all the way home.  
  
*  
  
The apartment’s empty when she gets back, sunlight fading as the sun recedes, the color of gold as it falls in slits through the blinds. She moves to the main window of the living room, grabs the silken cord and tugs the blinds all the way to the top, lets light flood the room. A smile graces her lips at its warmth, and it’s hard to imagine monsters here, bathed in sun like liquid on her skin.  
  
Her eyes fall to the plant in the window sill—gift from her mother, a goodbye when she’d left for school two years ago. It’s outgrown two pots since then, curling green leaves tipped with yellow spilling from its confines like froth, trailing almost to the floor. There’s a face drawn on the front of it, smiley face with a winking eye and flirty eyelashes, one corner of its smile drawn up in a smirk.  
  
 _-//”What are you doing?”  
  
Sam stands near the window, pot balanced in one hand, Sharpie marker clutched in his other. “Just giving it a little personality,” he says, drawing on the lopsided smile, and Jess laughs, steps up behind him to watch.  
  
“You’re a strange man, Sam Winchester.”//-_  
  
He’d finished the face and put the pot back down, kissed her hard, asked her to say his name again like he couldn’t get enough of the sound.  
  
She walks to the plant, more on a whim than anything else. Delicate fingers encircle the white plastic pot, lift it high in the light. She stares the face down at eye level, the lines of it faded only a little by the sun, and lifts it higher.  
  
Just the deep saucer, connected to the bottom, drainage holes concealed behind it. She blinks, mind completely blank except for one moment, one image.  
  
 _-//Sam with his hand under the plant to hold it steady. The tiny little shift he’d made to screw the saucer back on after he was done drawing. A nearly silent **click**.//-_  
  
She turns the saucer piece and tugs it off, lowers it. Drying scrum of muddy water inside, nothing else, and she sighs with relief.  
  
 _Paranoid._  
  
She looks up to screw it back on—  
  
There’s a symbol drawn on the underside of the pot itself, thick black lines, archaic and frightening.  
  
*  
  
She’s cooking dinner when he arrives, wooden spoon stirring red sauce, the smell of boiling noodles and tomato filling the air.  
  
They do idle chatter for a bit, Sam tasting the sauce and kissing the back of he neck, tap dancing around until he finally gets up the nerve to say something.  
  
“I’m sorry about this morning,” he sighs. “I should have been the one to go.”  
  
“It’s okay. It was my mess.”  
  
“I know. But he’s my brother.”  
  
“And?”  
  
“Jess, you spent the equivalent of a week with him,” Sam says, like it should be obvious that it wasn't her responsibility.  
  
She can’t help but chuckle at that. “He made an impression.”  
  
Sam makes a tiny sound like a snort, corner of his mouth twisting. “Yeah. He does that.”  
  
Silence between them for a long moment, noodles boiling, sauce simmering.  
  
“So everything went…?” He waves his long arms through the air, letting his hands speak the words.  
  
“About as well as expected.”  
  
He nods and swallows, stuffs his hands in his pockets, fingers flexing inside his jeans. He’s stiff as he leans back against the kitchen counter, unnatural crane to his neck as he looks down.  
  
“I was thinking… I should probably talk to him, now that… you know, you have.”  
  
She smiles, steps up to him and lets her body melt against his. Warm, solid, comfortable. Lean muscle over bone that already feels like home, even though it’s only been three months.  
  
“You probably should,” she agrees, whisper grazing against his ear, and he chuckles, pulls his hands free and settles them around her waist.  
  
“You’re extraordinary,” he says, face turning to nudge against her cheek. His lips are warm as they nuzzle her ear, send chills spilling down her throat, the column of her spine, and she turns into the pull of him, scent of soap and shampoo and something muskier, something she can only name as safety.  
  
“Sam,” she whispers, leans up to kiss his mouth. “I love you.”  
  
She feels him stiffen, wraps her arms around him to erase the reaction, pulling him in and easing back, gazes up at him—and he won’t meet her eyes. Doesn’t look at her.  
  
“I love you,” she whispers, plaintive. She swallows hard, tightens her arms and wills him to look. “Is that okay?”  
  
He draws his lower lip between his teeth, swell of pink caught between sharp white.  
  
“Yeah,” he breathes, sighing out like relief. “Yeah.” His eyes meet hers, warm and hazel, and in that moment, she _wishes_ , wishes so much that this is all there was. Just a girl in love with a boy, and a boy just figuring out that maybe he loves her too—and then all thought ceases, his mouth on hers, slide of insistent tongue, peeling back layers, digging in and lodging soft in her heart.  
  
They barely make it to the bedroom, noodles and sauce slid aside from their hot burners, left steaming and unfulfilled on the stove. He peels her clothes away slowly, stares down every inch of her like he’s never seen her before. Takes his time, mouth and hands covering every line, every curve, soft swell and hard bone, licked and kissed and suckled, until she’s mewling in his arms.  
  
He licks her cunt until she begs, slow, soft laves of his tongue until she cries, and then he makes her come, body dancing on the tips of his fingers, pressed deep inside.  
  
“I love you, Jess,” he whispers, and she clenches around his fingers, hands convulsing in the threads of his hair as she cries out his name. She writhes against the sheets, pillows and linens and _Sam_ , heart aching, empty and filled all at once.  
  
He fingers her slow as she comes down, body contracting against him. Sweet, sharp bursts of aftershocks with every push, and he carries her over the edge again, muscles trembling, spine arching, reaching, her mouth open as it spills senseless noise. Sweating, she collapses into the bed, finds his hand with hers and gently pulls him away.  
  
“Enough,” she whispers.  
  
She rolls over, pushes him underneath her. Wetness slicks her thighs, thick and honeyed as she slides down, takes the head of his cock. Warm velvet, soft and hard, and her body devours him inch by inch until she feels him full, flush against the barrier inside her. She moans, quivering, throws back her head and shoves her hands in her hair.  
  
“Fuck. Sam.”  
  
She rides him at a slow gallop, his hands on her hips, guiding her, quick twist of her body as he hits the top, pulling away to start the chase again. She fucks him harder, grinds him into the mattress, and his hands slide in the slick of her sweat, fall away as she takes the lead.  
  
He says her name again when he comes, pulsing hard inside her, and she digs her fingertips into his chest, leaves behind angry little half moon marks.  
  
It’s only in the afterglow, sated and sweaty that she turns her cheek against his chest, whispers soft against his skin.  
  
“I want to know about you, Sam. Tell me about your life.”  
  
She feels him tense, muscles a delicate interplay beneath the glow of his skin, and she slings an arm across him, wills him to stay with her.  
  
“Please. I want to know.”  
  
“Not much to tell,” he says, and his voice is rough, still silked with sex, gravel beneath. She can feel the resistance in him, tries to smooth it away with her fingertips, soft strokes across his chest, tracing the line of muscle.  
  
She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes. She can almost feel the cliff drop away beneath her toes, yawning chasm and she stands on the precipice, the choice, hers.  
  
“Tell me about the magic,” she whispers.  
  
“What?” Shaky uncertain laugh, rumbling beneath her hand, and she soothes it, tries to quell the source.  
  
“The symbol on the bottom of my plant.”  
  
“That was just playing around, Jess.” He’s half sitting up now, body coiled, and her hand falls away, strikes the sheets with a soft sound.  
  
“My family is… really superstitious.” Awkward laugh and she can hear the lie in him. “I guess… you grow up with that…” His hand moves through the air, motion meant to comfort, long fingers still damp and glistening with her. “You start to believe it, you know?”  
  
And she knows. Wishes she didn’t. Wishes she’d never gone to see Dean today, his eyes haunted with ghosts and demons, so pale against the backdrop of vivid red.  
  
“Your brother told me,” she says, sitting up.  
  
“What?” It’s a gasp of betrayal, and it’s all she needs to hear; the final nail in the coffin. She starts for the door, legs tangling in the sheets, and he’s right behind her, warm fingertips clutching at her back.  
  
“Jess. Wait, what--?”  
  
“Dean told me,” she shouts, whirling on him like a dervish. She can feel her hair, wild and tangled as it falls around her shoulders, can imagine the madness in her eyes.  
  
“And you… believe him?” he asks. Hands in the air and he sounds so _sane_ , so incredibly reasonable, eyes and mouth soft as he smiles.  
  
She steps toward him, lifts her chin and stares him straight in the eye. She loves him, and she means to know the truth, means to have peace.  
  
“Tell me, Sam. Tell me about the salt and the guns and the Latin.”  
  
He blinks, and she can see the shock course through him, tiny shudders of disbelief. It’s all right there, right there in his eyes, everything between them and everything that’s suddenly _come_ between them, a lifetime of knowing and hiding, deception and lies. He _knows_ , and suddenly she sees the boy behind the man, fissures held together with spit, stitch and bailing wire.  
  
“Jess. What are you… I don’t know…” Wide hazel eyes, jagged gasps of breath, and she wants to believe him.  
  
He’s _lying_.  
  
She turns, fumbles for the knob and staggers out into the hallway, sheet a feeble cover as she grasps it to her chest. She chokes back a sob, not knowing where she’s going, only that she needs to get _away_.  
  
“Jess?” Dean’s face, eyes intense -- and damn it, she left the door unlocked, didn’t think—but _he’s_ not surprised, just worried as he starts towards her and—stops—  
  
“Sam,” he breathes, hands clenching in fists. She turns, sees him just behind her, blanket wrapped around his waist, eyes flashing fire.  
  
“Dean? What the hell are you doing here?” Sam’s voice booms loud, crashing against her ears, and God, it’s all coming undone.  
  
“Heard the yelling and thought… didn’t know it was you,” Dean says, tight lipped and stormy eyed, angry and chagrined.  
  
“No. I mean _what the **hell** are you doing here_?”  
  
Dean’s eyes skitter to Jess, dodge away. “She called earlier.” She had. In a panic over the symbol on the plant she’d called him, hung up before he could answer. “I thought maybe…”  
  
“What?” There’s a harsh edge to Sam’s laugh, ugly, ugly sound. “That you might still have a chance with her? ‘Cause you sure as hell ruined mine.”  
  
“All I did was tell her the truth! If you loved her, you would have—“  
  
“I _do_ love her, Dean!” Sam snaps, and Dean recoils, falls back a step looking pale and shocked.  
  
And then Sam stops, goes suddenly still. Tilts his head at Dean, eyes calculating, incredulous. “You’re in love with her, too.”  
  
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Dean mutters, rolls his eyes, but it’s a thin veil.  
  
“You _are_ ,” Sam says, advancing on his brother, and she can’t understand why this seems to make Sam angrier than anything Dean’s said so far.  
  
“Did you know about me and her?” Dean asks, and there’s a brittle crack in his voice, an empty place where forgiveness can still find a home.  
  
Sam nods. “I knew.”  
  
“Then… why—“  
  
“You left for three months without a word, Dean! And then you come back here and expect, what? That she’d wait around for you?”  
  
“I’ve been out there doing the job _you_ should have been helping with. Instead, you get to be here… have all this.” He motions to the apartment with a sharp cut of his hands, eyes burning bright as they lock on Jess’s.  
  
“That’s not fair, Dean—“  
  
“What’s fair, Sam? Nothing’s ever been fair! You _know_ that. I’ve spent my whole life giving you everything! I would’ve given you _this_ , too. But you _took_ it. You _knew_. Why, Sam?”  
  
The two of them, bodies stiff and straining towards each other, eyes furious and flashing, backlash of anger caught between them in a feedback loop and she wonders how long this has been building. It’s more than she can stand and she feels naked in more than skin.  
  
Her clothes are still scattered across the kitchen floor and she tugs on her pants, then her shirt while they fight, neither of them answering the other one’s questions, both of them angry and hurt beyond all reason.  
  
They don’t seem to notice when she lets herself out, closes the apartment door silently behind her. She leaves them to their moment, needs to take one of her own, find a place to calm her mind. The night breeze is cool relief against her cheeks, and she combs her fingers through her hair, strokes it back and tries to just…breathe.  
  
She walks the streets of the town, barefoot against the sidewalk, barely noticing those she passes. She wanders for an hour, maybe more before she starts to feel like maybe she can turn the world right side up again.  
  
When she reaches the apartment door, everything is quiet inside, and she has a strange moment where her belly leaps, fear and hope screaming through her.  
  
She turns the knob, opens the door.  
  
*  
  
At first she can’t process what she’s seeing. It doesn’t make any _sense_ and her brain refuses to interpret the image. And then her mind recoils with a snap, everything falling into place so suddenly it takes her breath away.  
  
Dean stands, naked from the waist down, his fingers gripping Sam’s head, twined tight in dark strands. His head tips back, eyes half open and glazed as he stares down at Sam, upper lip caught in an angry snarl around his teeth.  
  
Sam’s completely naked, on his knees in front of his brother, muscles gleaming in the lamplight, thin sheen of sweat rising on him as he moves his head with quick, sure strokes, lips wrapped around Dean’s cock. She watches as his mouth slides up and down the length, leaving Dean spit-slicked and shiny, can hear the low, eager moans in Sam’s throat as he moves, one hand between his legs as he works his own cock, rock hard and leaking.  
  
She thinks maybe she makes some kind of sound. Small, trapped noise in her throat, and then Dean’s eyes move, bright green gaze that locks on hers. Guilt and shame and betrayal rush through her, and she has a moment to wonder if this is how _he_ felt, before Sam turns his head, sees her, too.  
  
“Jess.” The word is an apology, an entreaty, and she hates the way it sounds, how it’s meant to console, comfort. As if it could. As if anything could.  
  
She laughs, a quick, bitter bark, and takes a step toward them, folds her arms across her chest.


	3. Chapter 3

It wasn’t that Dean hadn’t thought she’d walk in… it was that neither of them had thought, at all.  
  
“So, this is it,” she says. “This is what it’s _really_ all about.”  
  
She looks at Dean with sharp, too-bright eyes. “Do all your arguments devolve into incestuous fucking?”  
  
“Only the really good ones.” The words erupt from somewhere deep inside, sure, strong and cynical.  
  
Strong set of her jaw, hard lines like scars, but there's something perilous in her eyes, something fragile and failing, a wound sealed in deepest blue. Dean wonders if this is how he'd looked when he walked in on them together, and something in his gut turns over, twists, sick and satisfied.  
  
"So what do you think, Jess? Still think he's your normal little Sammy?"  
  
He hears Sam hiss in a quick breath. All she does is blink, but he knows a flinch when he sees one. Her mouth splits in a smile, pale pink and full, curve of it like a half-moon, wrong against the hard set of her eyes.  
  
"Looks like you're in a position to draw some… comparisons.” His words from the diner echo in his ears like accusations, bite and sting of regret. But she’s not having it, won’t have a bit of it, one hand on her hip as she asks, cool and smooth as silk across his skin, "So tell me, Dean… Which one of us gives better head?"  
  
"Don't know. Might need a refresher." And sometimes, he really doesn't understand the shit that comes out of his mouth. He opens it and words come tumbling out and all he can do is shake his head and wonder how the hell that just happened. But he figures this is fucked six ways from Sunday, anyway—maybe sixteen ways, for that matter—so what difference does it make?  
  
Jess just smiles, long tumble of hair like honey, expanse of tanned skin making short, tight movements toward him. The smile she gives him is criminal as she stands before him; wicked twist of her lips that sits askew on her beautiful face, promises him things he can't even fathom.  
  
She falls to her knees, and Dean stares down at her like staring down the barrel of a gun. The room feels like powder keg, calm before the storm. Flick of her tongue that lights the spark; darker pink shade against her lips, bare of lipstick now, face fresh and clean with tears, and he doesn’t want to think about that. Doesn’t want to know the pain she’s in because then he’ll have to deal with his own.  
  
She puts her hand on Sam’s cheek, draws him in and lets her mouth melt against his brother’s, sweet sweep of her tongue, twining and circling, a show for Dean’s benefit, and it stabs his heart, sharper twist than any real blade. Sam leans in, kisses her back, rises on his knees to meet her, give and take, slow devouring until she slips away, mouth wet and shining. Round “o” shape of it as she looks up at Dean through knowing blue. He can feel the heat of her panting breath, rush of air against the head of his dick, so fucking _close_ , such a fucking _tease_ \--and then she leans in, never breaking the gaze between them, tongues across the leaking slit of his cock.  
  
“Fuck,” he groans.  
  
This could not possibly be more fucked up.  
  
It’s the last thing he thinks before all thoughts vaporize, carried off by the slick heat of her mouth swallowing him, sliding slow to the base, throat fluttering around the head of his cock, and _Jesus_ , maybe she was holding back with him before, because it’s never been like _this_. Quickening rhythm, twists of her head as she reaches the tip and dives in again, like she’s hungry for it, starving for it, like she can’t get _enough_ , and he feels his knees go weak, rush of blood warm like sunshine as his knees buckle. Hot fingers fitted around the base, tugging in time with the sleek glide of her mouth, tongue circling and drawing shapes with spit on the underside of his cock.  
  
She pulls from him with a wet pop and wipes at her glistening lower lip, one finger tracing the curve, curl of a smile and wicked flash of her eyes as she looks at Sam.  
  
“Your turn.”  
  
Sam buries his hands in her hair, twines golden strands in his fingertips, eats at her mouth like it’s the sweetest honey he’s ever tasted, and it hurts. It _hurts_. Pain like an arrow through his heart, still beating around the wound. Standing there, watching them, cock like an exclamation point against the air, aching hard, and he feels ridiculous, silly, unnecessary.  
  
Sam’s world. Sam’s life, and he never should have come here.  
  
And then, Sam pulls from her, eyes open as he falls away, staring at her, and there’s something in that gaze Dean recognizes but can’t name. Something that Dean remembers feeling when Sam still looked at Dean like a hero. When they were both still kids and everything was so simple.  
  
Sam turns, looks up at Dean with those same eyes—the ones that make Dean flush with love, and pride, and hope—and then leans forward, wraps his lips around the head of Dean’s cock, and Dean feels his eyes roll back, up into his head, lids fluttering helplessly as his hips stutter against his brother’s mouth.  
  
Perfect lips, throat taking him in, soft and tight, slip and slide up and down the length, crazy zig-zag of tongue like love letters written into thin skin and he gasps aloud, bites down hard.  
  
“Jesus, Sam,” he breathes. More comfortable here to twine his hands tight in darkened locks, claim this mouth for his own. Familiar, known. This thing that started long before Sam ever left for college, long before Dean realized their love went far beyond driven, far beyond where love should end.  
  
Jess. Beautiful, silken, soft presses of her mouth against the skin of his thighs, slowly circling around to the other side. Press of her tongue and nip of her teeth against the back of his knee. Slide of her tongue up the center of his leg, drawing to a point at the cleft of him, Sam’s mouth hot, heavy and hard, sucking like this is an Olympic event and he’s _got_ to win the gold.  
  
He feels her hands on him, light and insistent, pushing him apart. And then the slick snake of her tongue probing between; tip tucking just into the center, breaching the ring of tight muscle. He hisses, slips, fucks into Sam’s mouth with a sharp thrust, accidental, unthinking, and Sam grunts, moans around Dean’s cock, thick eager noise, takes it all and begs for more. He holds on to Sam’s head and rocks his hips, fucking into both of them, back and forth, wonders when the world starting turning on his dick, because _Christ_. Sweet, tight slide of his cock in and out of Sam while Jess’s tongue fucks into him and retreats, pleasure with every twitch, every movement, and _fuck_ , it’s exquisite, _overwhelming_ , but he’s _not_ going to come yet. Trembling on the verge, every muscle shaking, he tugs Sam’s head from his cock, smoothes a hand through his brother’s hair, strokes with approval and consolation.  
  
“Dean,” Sam breathes, and that sound, that voice, paved with need and want, gets to him just the same way it always has. So all consuming, bright and pointed, teeth that prickle against Dean’s skin and _own_ him, utterly.  
  
Dean pulls Sam up to his feet by the hair, and God he loves the twist of his brother’s neck, bared to him, bent backward by the power of Dean’s hand, so willingly. He yanks Sam to him, kisses him hard and deep, lets his tongue paint hunger inside his brother’s mouth.  
  
Jess slides up his spine, soft press of breasts and mouth dragging along his back until she reaches his neck. Her hands slide around him, soft and warm, fingertips digging into his belly.  
  
He pulls back from Sam, turns, shoves his hands up into Jess’s hair and drags her in, presses his forehead to hers, lips barely brushing hers, pouring heat into her mouth as he whispers, “This is so fucked up.”  
  
“Dean…” She looks down, breathes. She shakes her head, lifts her eyes to his and stares him straight down just like the first night he’d met her.  
  
“How long have you been in love with him?” she asks.  
  
“All my life,” he says, stares back, honest, unapologetic.  
  
She makes a sound like a sigh, smoothes her hands down his neck. “Me, too,” she says, tremble of smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, and then she kisses him, sinking in deep and warm, the smell of her filling him, and Jesus, she might just be perfect.  
  
Sam slides close along the line of Dean’s jaw, and Dean turns his face a little, opens his mouth wider, lets Sam’s tongue curl between theirs, the three of them kissing until he doesn’t know where Sam ends and Jess begins.  
  
“Bed,” he growls, word rumbling inside their mouths. “Now.”  
  
-  
  
She’s still glistening, sticky thighs and secrets from before, when Sam spreads her legs and licks up the center of her, tongue separating her inner lips, catching the tip and flicking at her clit. Dean’s got her head in his lap, one hand pinning her wrists together, the other hand moving back and forth between her breasts, pinching and twisting her nipples as she bucks against Sam’s mouth. She knows Dean has a perfect view as Sam sucks her clit into his mouth, pushes two fingers between the cleft of her, and she twists, shuddering and backing up into Dean’s lap. He shoves her back down the bed with his free hand, pushes down on her belly with it and holds her nice and tight.  
  
“Stay still and let him eat your cunt, sweetheart.”  
  
She moans, pressed in place while Sam licks her, fucks her with his fingers, pressing up and out against that sweet spot, Dean whispering encouragement.  
  
“Yeah, Jess. God, he’s gonna make you come, isn’t he? Gonna make you come so hard. Come on. Don’t be shy because I’m watching.”  
  
She groans, his words sending heat sparking through her, and she wants to tell Dean that she doesn’t care, isn’t shy, that it turns her on to have both of them watching, touching, all over her like this, knowing they want her, want each other. This shouldn’t feel so good, so _natural_ , both of them, smooth loving tongue and rough, nimble hands, but somehow it’s perfect, and she spreads her legs wider for Sam, looks up at Dean to seek his approval.  
  
“That’s so good, Jess. God, so fucking _hot_.”  
  
Dean leans down and kisses her, his mouth tasting like Sam as he lets his hand slide down between her thighs. He spreads her outer lips apart with two thick fingers, pulls them up and away, leaving her wide open, exposed. Sam takes advantage, twists his chin and suckles her clit all way to the base, tongue working over it with quick, furious shivers, fucking his fingers into her harder, and God, Dean’s hand there, heel of his palm pressed against just where Sam’s fingers thrust upward, pinning her hips, hitting that sweet spot so fucking _hard_ because he’s pushing her down into Sam as Sam fucks up, and she feels it all start to spiral out of control, too many hands, mouths, sensations, too much, everywhere, and—  
  
“Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ ,” she pants, each word winding up higher than the one before.  
  
“That’s it, Jess, come for us like a good girl,” Dean whispers, and her body explodes, pleasure sweeping through her from head to toe.  
  
“Oh yeah, good girl,” he breathes, kisses her. “Such a good girl.” He shoves in with the heel of his hand and Sam scrapes his teeth across her clit and she feels like she’s going to split in two from the pleasure, scream tearing out of her throat, and Dean watches it all with rapt eyes, never looking away from her face. When she’s done, she’s whimpering, teary-eyed and twitching, still too high from her orgasm to be anything but delirious, and Dean kisses the last of her moans away.  
  
Dean pulls back slightly, bites at her lower lip and whispers, “Roll over.”  
  
She rolls onto her belly, still panting, and when she feels Dean’s lube-slicked fingers push against the rosebud of her ass, she stiffens just a little.  
  
“It’s okay,” Dean soothes, strokes around the hole with his fingers until she relaxes.  
  
“Gotta get you ready so we can both fuck you at the same time.” She moans, shivering, and by the time Dean’s fucked her open with two fingers all the way to the knuckle, she’s shoving back against his hand, begging him for more.  
  
“Knew you’d love it.”  
  
Face down on the bed, cunt soaking, Dean puts his hands on her cheeks and spreads her apart as Sam sinks slow deep inside of her, spiking pain-pleasure all through her.  
  
Sam rolls her onto her side, and an instant later, Dean’s in front of her. He puts his hands on her hips, holds her still again, eyes locked on hers as she feels the head of his cock thrust inside her, slow, tight, incredible _squeeze_ , so tight she thinks her body isn’t going to accept him, won’t be able to keep him—and then he slides home with a last shove of his hips, grinding into her and grunting as he hits the barrier of her body. Jesus, she’s so fucking _full_ , incredible pressure on every sweet spot in her body, stretching the nerves taut and pushing into them hard. It’s almost too much, just being pinned there between them, her whole stomach nothing but a bundle of nerves quivering with sheer sensation, and then Dean moves, rocks his hips out and in, and she can feel the head of his cock scrape against her g-spot as it glides, hitting with intense pressure, and then Sam moves, and fuck fuck fuck she can’t think anymore, her body too white-hot to focus on anything else.  
  
“You love it, don’t you?” Dean asks, twists his hips mercilessly, and then she’s tumbling over the edge, muscles convulsing, throat raw. They keep moving, relentless inside her, and she loses track of how many times she comes, orgasm spilling into orgasm, overlapping and overflowing.  
  
-  
  
They cling to Dean like lambs, claw at him like lions.  
  
Sam fucks into her from behind, Dean from the front, her body caught between them like a fly trapped in amber, mouth open and bruised with kisses, stained red with them. Skin slick with sweat, flush of pink on her cheeks, her chest and she’s never been more beautiful. Meld of her mouth to his, Sam’s hands on his skin, across his back, gripping him tight, pulling him in with every thrust, timed rhythm and her body jolts with the force of them both at the apex of their thrusts.  
  
When she comes, screaming, clenching around his cock for the fifth time, he leans in and licks at her mouth, steals some of the sound. She’s magnificent, not a bit uncomfortable, as caught in both of them as they are in her, perfect the way she curves against him, shoulders leaning back into Sam as she kisses Dean fervently. Sam leans in across her shoulder and Dean turns his face, kisses Sam there, nestled in the curve of her neck.  
  
Both of them here, so close in his arms, and he wants to run from it. Too intense, too emotional, too deep and fucked up and crazy to let it all in. Not when he’ll have to give it all up, anyway.  
  
Sam turns his face into the curve of Jess’s neck, kisses there. “Not your fault we fought, Jess,” Sam whispers into her skin, and Dean feels her tremble. “Not your fault. You’re part of this, now.”  
  
 _-//“How could you tell her, Dean?”  
  
“How could you not?”  
  
“Because I wanted that part of my life to be over.”  
  
“That **part** is who you are.”  
  
“No, it isn’t.”  
  
A muscle in Dean’s jaw works. “It’s who **I** am. How can it not be part of you?”//-_  
  
Dean closes his eyes, thrusts deep with his hips, and holds them both a little harder.  
  
*  
  
Sam’s on all fours, his ass in the air, mouth locked around Dean’s cock, Dean’s hands fisted in his brother’s hair as he fights to breathe. Jess is behind Sam, fingers trailing down the cleft of him, and Dean can’t see exactly what she’s doing but he thinks he knows well enough from the way his brother’s hips keep bucking, from the wet, thick needy noises Sam keeps making around his cock every time her wrists shifts.  
  
“You’re fucking him with your fingers?” he asks, in a tone that isn’t really asking.  
  
“Thought I’d get him ready for you,” she answers, and he can _see_ her twist her arm this time, feel Sam shudder all around his cock with a load moan and Jesus _fuck_ that’s hot. Dean imagines her pretty pink fingers dipping in and out of the well of his brother’s body, fucking him with as many as Sam can take, and between the two it’s enough to make his belly tighten, feel the rush of euphoria shoot through him, stumbling deliriously close to edge.  
  
“God, Dean, need you,” Sam groans, and Dean’s cock twitches, nearly spilling at the sex-thick sound of the words.  
  
He pulls Sam off his dick and tries to breathe, every muscle trembling with the effort not to come right fucking now.  
  
“Get on your back,” Dean says, half pushing Sam over.  
  
Jess watches with wide eyes, chest moving with quick, excited breaths, and Dean can see she’s slick again between her thighs. He wonders if she’ll masturbate while she watches them, if it’ll turn her on to watch him fucking Sam.  
  
“What are you waiting for?” she asks.  
  
“Was just wondering if you might get lonely without us,” he answers with a slow, teasing grin.  
  
“This isn’t about me.”  
  
Dean puts his hand on her wrist, fingers brushing over the delicate knob of bone there, and then he locks his fingers around the tiny bones in her forearm and pulls, dragging her up the bed. He splays a hand across the width of her waist, cupping her spine, and kisses her hard.  
  
“Not _this_ part,” he whispers, leaves the rest unsaid.  
  
He settles her down next to Sam’s body, then lays on top, chest skimming up Sam’s belly. Licks a circle around the flat disc of one nipple and then catches the peaked tip between his teeth, leaving Sam gasping. Slicks his cock without ever taking his eyes from his brother’s burning gaze, and fuck, Sam’s tight. Tight and hot and spreading slowly to take Dean all the way in. He flicks his thumbs over Sam’s nipples, leans in close and pushes hard.  
  
“Christ, Dean,” Sam gasps, shoves his hips up to meet Dean, and Dean has to pause, wait a second before he moves, wants to take his time with this. Two years, he’s been waiting, and who knows if he’ll ever--  
  
He cuts the thought short, focuses on his brother’s face, warm hazel eyes hot as coals as they stare Dean down.  
  
“God, Dean, _do it_.” And Sam’s already so close to begging that Dean’s about to break.  
  
“Why’d you do this, Sam?” he asks. He doesn’t mean to ask it, maybe, but he can’t help it. Not when he’s here, brother bare and laid out before him, gorgeous stretch of golden skin, muscles quivering, Dean flush and full inside him, feeling his heartbeat pound through his cock and into Sam. Life and blood and flesh and all the things he’s ever been able to give. It’s such a small thing, to mean so much. To be _everything_.  
  
Jess runs a hand through his hair like wind over the desert, feels like leaving ripples in burning sand. Her eyes are sad, and he can’t stay, can’t look at her for too long.  
  
“Because she was…” Sam swallows, throws back his head as Dean twitches his hips, length of Sam’s neck exposed, long and bare, sharp crest of his Adam’s apple the highest point of his body. “Because she fit.”  
  
Flash of something through Dean, too fast and dark to be seen. It moves like a tiny lizard, skittering between his ribs and burrowing in his heart.  
  
“Did she fit you like _this_?” Dean asks, twists his hips, head of his cock dragging over the sweet spot inside Sam’s body. Sam goes rigid, muscles cording, fingers digging hard into the bed, shakes apart like lightning, shuddering and breathing heavy.  
  
“No,” he gasps. His eyes open, focus on Dean’s face like floodgates opening, pleading, needing understanding, needing _Dean_ , and Dean rewards him with a long, slow, ripple of his body. Pulls out almost to the tip, feels the tight ring of muscle close around the head of his cock and groans, pushes back in just as slow, gliding all the way to the top.  
  
Sam strains as he rises to meet Dean’s body, eyes locked on Dean’s, and _God_ such a black hole of need in him. Sam puts his hand on Dean’s cheek, smooth, warm skin gripping him. “She was like you, Like you, and me, too,” Sam whispers, like it’s everything.  
  
“Yeah,” Dean answers. And he knows. He _knows_.  
  
Slow, shuddering heave and Sam fits him like a glove, body to soul and everything else in between. He bites hard against his lower lip, traps the swell between his teeth and breathes deep. Doesn’t want to say these words, doesn’t want to pour his need out like a leech on his brother’s heart. He thrusts in, gentle, like velvet, puts a hand on each of Sam’s shoulders and curls his fingers deep, like searching for comfort. For all the things he’s been missing these last two years.  
  
“Why’d you go, Sam?” he asks, voice thick and he hates the _need_ in it, so sick with need, but he can’t stop it from spilling out. Can’t keep this secret anymore.  
  
“You left me,” he whispers.  
  
Sam’s fingers twitch against Dean’s cheek, his body recoiling as if from a slap, and Dean closes his eyes against the sight, against the tightening bliss of his brother’s body all around him.  
  
“I had to.” Sam’s voice, so guttural, bleeding and bruised, and it’s the embodiment of everything between them, everything they’ve ever known. War torn and ragged. “I needed to know… what life could be like.”  
  
Dean bows his head, goes still, truth hanging in the silence between them, and then…  
  
“I’ve missed you,” Sam whispers. “Missed you so much, Dean,” Sam says, fervent and heated, and Dean lets his eyes flutter open, sees the naked love in his brother’s face, etched bone-deep in every line, every curve.  
  
“Yeah,” he whispers back, and God, he sounds so broken. “Yeah, me too.” He lets his eyes carry the weight for a moment then ducks his face and mouths against Sam’s throat. Thrusts into Sam hard, tries to fuck the words away before Sam can say anything else.  
  
*  
  
When they were kids, they used to build forts out of the motel room pillows—or if they were lucky enough to have a house that month, actual couch pillows. Leather, plastic, Berber, musty and unraveling, pieces of foam poking through from the inside. They would hunker down inside them, stretched out side by side on their bellies, and they’d share the last of the cookies or crackers and cheese, pretending they were campers lost in the woods. They’d shoot at imaginary bears and fend off invisible wolves, share a sleeping bag to stave off the ‘cold’ when it came time for sleeping. When he woke in the morning, it was always to Sam wrapped in a tight tangle around Dean’s body, tiny hands fisted in the material of Dean’s shirt, shaggy hair tumbling across Dean’s chest, Sam’s cheek against Dean’s heartbeat.  
  
When they got too old for building forts, they’d still lay next to each other on beds, flat on their stomachs side-by-side against faded linens and fraying quilts, forearms and hips brushing as they watched TV, sharing microwave popcorn and juice boxes. Later, when they got too old even for that, after touching Sam became a thing that brought more confusion than comfort and then they finally slipped and tumbled over the line together, Sam would crawl into Dean’s bed on the nights John left them behind, curl up against his spine like second skin, and Dean would remember those times spent in sleeping bags under the cover of pillows.  
  
He’d thought even then that they’d always be able to fend off the wolves, so long as they stayed together.  
  
-  
  
Dean’s a tanned sprawl of limbs, loose grace against the bed. Naked and unselfconscious, his only adornment one arm slung across his forehead. Sam sits on the edge of the bed, listening to the drumming sound of water pound against the porcelain tub in the bathroom, can imagine Jess as she must look in there, naked golden skin, surrounded by rising mist.  
  
“What made you want her, Sam? Besides her being awesome and hot?”  
  
“Isn’t that enough?”  
  
“Not enough for you to do what you did.” Dean’s eyes are level, expectant.  
  
 _Because touching her was like touching you, through her.  
  
Because belonging to her was like belonging to you._  
  
Sam turns away, takes a deep breath, dodges Dean’s glance and skates the question. “After I left… I thought we’d never…be like _this_ again.”  
  
Dean’s face goes carefully blank, white around his eyes going just a bit wider, mouth smoothing into a straight line, and Sam spent a lifetime figuring out the more expressionless Dean’s face is, the deeper the hurt.  
  
“We’re not,” Dean murmurs, and there’s a thin crack in his voice, just the barest note of breaking. He rises from the bed, naked and limned in moonlight, and he’s so beautiful Sam has to look away, his brother’s words ringing harsh in his ears.  
  
He doesn’t know how to begin, _where_ to begin with everything there is to say. How to tell Dean all the things he feels. “And now… everything’s a mess,” Sam says.  
  
“Don’t count her out,” Dean says, tugging his jeans up around his hips “She’s tough.”  
  
“What about…” Sam blinks, meaning sinking in like salt in a wound. “Wait. Dean—you’re leaving?”  
  
“Much fun as all this has been, I know it’s not what you want. Should’ve never come in the first place.” Dean averts his eyes, guilt swaying them heavily away from Sam’s face as he yanks on his shirt. “I don’t belong here.”  
  
Sam opens his mouth, expects something to come out, and Dean waits a moment more, those green eyes downcast. Heartbeats tick by in strained silence, and finally Dean nods, turns away.  
  
“See you around, Sam.”  
  
-  
  
He grabs his boots and socks on the way out the door, closing it quietly on the frame behind him. The asphalt is warm beneath his bare feet, still radiating the baked-in heat of the daytime sun.  
  
The moon rises high and crescent shaped against the night sky, and the shape reminds him of the marks Jess left on his back, the aching shallow scratches and bruises that sink deeper than skin. Blood hot in thick in spots along his throat where Sam had bitten and sucked at him, still fresh with a slight ache, pain shot through with sweetness.  
  
He presses his fingers to the marks, feels blood pump life through thin skin and smiles.  
  
The Zeppelin mix tape sits half out of the tape deck, a memory he’d listened to on the way here, smiling and tapping his fingers against the steering wheel in time to, no thoughts other than what would be waiting for him at the end of the drive.  
  
He shoves it in and lets the music glide over him like iodine over a thousand cuts. Funny how music can ache and cleanse all at once.  
  
His eyes lift to her bedroom window, thinks he can see someone standing there in the faint light behind the curtains, looking down at him.  
  
-  
  
Jess wraps the fluffy down of a white towel around her head and slips into fresh clothes; Daisy Duke cut-off sweats and a Funshine CareBear t-shirt with the words “Shine On” printed across her breasts. Same clothes she’s worn around the house and to bed, hundreds of times.  
  
She stares at herself in the mirror as the mist slowly lifts from its surface, brushes her hair out slow. She looks just the same as she always has, but everything feels different inside. Neat rows and rows of boxes turned over, emptied out and then stuffed back in haphazardly, shoved down deep to make them all fit in the space, bursting out the edges of her seams.  
  
She knows as soon as she steps back into the bedroom that something’s changed.  
  
Sam stands at the window, far enough away from the bathroom light that he’s a figure cut from pale moonlight and shadow, sharp angles like he’s made of paper, folded tight. His fingers clench, knotting on the windowsill as he speaks.  
  
“He’s gone.”  
  
Her heart stutters in her chest and she realizes she hadn’t expected this. Hadn’t prepared for this possibility. “What? Why?”  
  
“Because he thinks… I don’t want him. That I came to Stanford to stop what was going on between me and him.”  
  
“Is that why?”  
  
“No.” He bites his lower lip, hesitates. “Sort of… maybe. Damn it,” he sighs.  
  
“I… I love you Jess,” he says, forlorn, lost. He stares out the window like the street below might give him the answers he needs so badly, if he only looked hard enough. “But Dean…” He bites down hard, guilty lash against the words. “I don’t know if I can…”  
  
 _Let him go.  
  
Be without him.  
  
Stop loving him._  
  
He says all of those things and exactly none of them, his voice trailing off into her imagination. In her mind’s eye she can see them, tall and leanly muscled, joined at mouth and heart, each of them such a part of the other they’re inseparable, yet unmistakably different, two sides of the same coin.  
  
“I’m sorry, Jess. I should’ve never dragged you into this. Should’ve told you a long time ago,” he says, condemning, taking all the blame. He lets out a slow sigh, rush of air like all the anger draining out of him, shakes his head.  
  
“I want you to know… I’d still be here, still want to be with you, even if he’d never been involved.” Inevitable pause, followed by an inevitable word she can hear coming from miles away, and she tenses, waits for it to fall.  
  
“But… once I knew you’d been with him… that you cared about him…” He hesitates, almost stumbling over the words. “That part of you still belonged to him, in your heart, it was like…” His lips thin to a pale, near invisible line, brows tipping towards each other and drawing together above his regretful eyes.  
  
And she can guess the weight of this secret. Not so hard to understand, once she’d seen the two of them together. “It was like part of you still getting to be with him?” she asks, voice soft, gentle caress so as not to startle him.  
  
“Yeah,” he says, surprised. A hollow bark of laughter escapes him like a punctuation to that single word, self-deprecation implicit in the sound. “And it’s not like I could explain that. Not without explaining everything else.”  
  
“Didn’t you think he might come back?” she asks.  
  
“You have to understand… I didn’t think… I didn’t think he’d be in love with you. Dean just doesn’t…” Sam pauses, struggling for words and there’s something shocked and thin on his face, a wound that runs a lot deeper than the ones they’d all left on each other tonight.  
  
“And when I saw he _was_ …” She can see the muscles in his jaw tense, eyes narrowing. “I got _mad_. I felt…tricked. The look in his eyes... I _hurt_ him. Because he was in love with _you_ —and that was never supposed to happen. He was never supposed to fall in love with anyone except—“  
  
He bites off the words and grinds his teeth down hard, half turning his face away. “So selfish,” he admonishes, hissing through his teeth.  
  
She doesn’t understand it all. Catches glimpses of their history in his words, in his face, like snatches of sun through the trees in a forest. Knows those roots go deep, great and mighty Oaks rising tall and proud across the years between them. It isn’t legal, maybe, isn’t moral, but it’s _right_ \--somehow she feels that, the same way she felt right with each of them. That feeling of clicking into place, like pieces of herself she hadn’t even known were missing.  
  
She’s not sure she’d be able to let go of what they have either. She’s not sure if she _can_.  
  
“Sam… do you want him?”  
  
Heavy silence, and she wishes she could see his face. Grief and love and _years_ in his voice as he finally answers, “I don’t think I ever stopped.”  
  
“Then… why are you telling _me_ all this?”  
  
Sam stills, and she can almost see her words strike him between the shoulder blades like a blow. “I’m sorr—“  
  
She takes a breath, heart pounding sudden and furious in her chest. “I mean, shouldn’t you be telling _us_?”  
  
“What?” His surprise is so complete that he’s in motion, turning on her like a sudden storm, shadows fleeing his features as he steps forward. “Us?”  
  
“You said I’m part of this now, right?”  
  
He stares at her, dumbfounded, eyes wide, mouth working like a dying fish.  
  
“God, I love you,” he breathes, and she can’t help but smile.  
  
“I know.”  
  
-  
  
In the beginning, all he’d wanted was something normal.  
  
Something besides Dean’s ghost lurking around every corner, smirking through the edges of his mind, haunting him everywhere, there in everything he saw, everything he did.  
  
The first art class he’d taken, they’d studied Michelangelo. Body after body made of light and shadow, each unearthly in its rendering, powerful and alluring, all benevolent faces and knowing smiles. Glowing purity that radiated angelic beauty in the expanse of skin, each one implying a mystery, a story he’d wanted to know. But each time he’d tried to read them --decipher their impossibly gorgeous features, know their minds through the language of their bodies, the set of their eyes -- he’d only ever seen Dean. Dean, in the narrow hips and chest of David, in the forearms of Moses and the grace of Pieta.  
  
How could he ever be expected to see anything else, when all he’d ever known was Dean?  
  
Dean’s arms, that held him when he fell, made him get back on his feet. Dean’s hands that stitched his wounds, dried his tears, and later, stroked him with such reverence, ran down the plane of his belly, wrapped tight around his cock, love and need, hooded emerald eyes that burned just for him, breaking and building with every breath Sam took.  
  
When he was four, he knew the sky wasn’t blue just because his Dad said so. Wasn’t just because it “was”. He knew even then there was a reason for everything, a “why” and a “how” just waiting to be known. So he read, and he studied, and he learned that rainbows were only water dancing on light, that everything was just light, made up of atoms, math and cells. No such thing as unicorns or a happy ending, no such thing as Santa Claus or safety.  
  
That monsters were real.  
  
Dean never cared about the “why’s” or the “how’s”. Dean cared about “is” and “ here” and “not here”. When he kissed Dean for the first time, it was the only time Sam remembers his brother asking “why”, and Sam didn’t answer. Pulled Dean into the tangle of the bedspread and put his hands all over him, touched and licked and bit until Dean stopped asking. Until Dean turned Sam over and pressed him into the mattress, body making serpentine shapes against Sam’s, mouth hot and needing, breathing Sam’s name.  
  
Sometimes, he wishes he’d answered his brother. He wishes he’d known _how_ to answer. Maybe if he’d known what to say, he wouldn’t have needed to leave. Wouldn’t have had to see the hurt etched in lines of his brother’s face, buried under a pasted on smile when Sam said goodbye.  
  
Some things, you can learn from people, from books, the internet. And some things… you have to find out on your own.  
  
When he was scared, when he was alone in his dorm and clinging to charms in the dark, salt on the windowsill and trepidation in his soul, he thought of going home. But home was a place in his brother’s heart, nothing of structure, nothing of brick and mortar.  
  
Home was Dean. _Breathing_ was Dean.  
  
And here, two years later, his breath caught in his chest as he runs hard, chasing taillights, he finds himself in the same place, coming back to the same place he’s always come. The only place he’s ever known.  
  
Dean.  
  
He grips the edge of the car door and leans down.  
  
As he kisses his brother’s mouth, drinks him in deep, Sam still doesn’t know “why”. He just knows it “is”.  
  
*  
  
Dean’s got his head halfway out the window, meeting Sam mouth to mouth, matching his brother for every tongue stroke of desperation before his mind can catch up, belated footnote.  
  
“Don’t go,” Sam murmurs, fingers threading Dean’s hair and Dean breathes deep, tries to focus.  
  
“Wait,” he whispers, pulls himself from the tangle of Sam’s mouth. “What about Jess?”  
  
This is about him and Sam, but Jess, she’s part of it, too, she completes the connections, and fuck. He thinks maybe she could be as important to both of them as they are to each other, and that’s a lot.  
  
Sam stops, warmth pulling away, and Dean feels his heart sink, drop out like an anchor.  
  
He sees a flash of her--curve of her jaw, apple of her cheek and the flutter of her eyelashes above it—just before she leans in to kiss him. Fresh smell of soap, mint taste of toothpaste and slow, warm press of her mouth, just the tip of her tongue, and it’s like revelation, like light spilling out and filling all the hollows inside him.  
  
She puts a hand on his cheek and leaves it there as she pulls away, feels Sam’s hand move to touch his jaw on the other side.  
  
“Stay,” she says.


End file.
